Coupled hydro-mechanical processes are of great importance to numerous engineering systems, e.g., hydraulic fracturing, geothermal energy, and carbon sequestration. Fluid flow in fractures is modeled after a Poiseuille law that relates the conductivity to the aperture by a cubic relation. Newton's method is commonly employed to solve the resulting discrete, nonlinear algebraic systems. It is demonstrated, however, that Newton's method will likely converge to nonphysical numerical solutions, resulting in estimates with a negative fracture aperture. A Quasi-Newton approach is developed to ensure global convergence to the physical solution. A fixed-point stability analysis demonstrates that both physical and nonphysical solutions are stable for Newton's method, whereas only physical solutions are stable for the proposed Quasi-Newton method. Additionally, it is also demonstrated that the Quasi-Newton method offers a contraction mapping along the iteration path. Numerical examples of fluid-driven fracture propagation demonstrate that the proposed solution method results in robust and computationally efficient performance.
翻译:对许多工程系统,例如液压断裂、地热能和碳固存等,水力-机械过程非常重要。骨折中的流体流以与孔径的传导因立方关系而关联的Poisuille法律为模型。牛顿的方法通常用于解决由此产生的离散的非线性代数系统。不过,可以证明牛顿的方法可能会与非物理数字解决方案相汇,从而得出负骨折孔估计值。正在开发一种准牛顿方法,以确保全球接近物理解决方案。固定点稳定性分析表明,对牛顿方法而言,物理和非物理解决方案都是稳定的,而对于拟议的Qasi-Newton方法而言,只有物理解决方案是稳定的。此外,还证明,Quasi-Newton方法可以沿着斜路绘制收缩图。流体驱动骨折传播的数值实例表明,拟议解决方案方法能够产生稳健和计算高效的性能。